Edison Hour - On March 28 Celebrate Technological Achievement and Switch the Fucking Lights Back On Again

Submitted by HWH on Thu, 2009-03-26 13:07

On 2009, at 8.30pm your time on March 28, we are asking people across the world to turn ON their lights and join together in a celebration of technology and industrialization. For one hour, please use as much power and energy as possible in order to celebrate the advancement of mankind.

Earth Hour is this Saturday, March 28, 8:30 pm local time. People all across the world are shutting off all their lights as a pledge to fight global warming. The Earth Hour website is calling the measure the "world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming." A light switched off is a vote for the Earth and a light on a vote for global warming.

Many landmarks throughout the world have pledged to turn off during Earth Hour, including the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Eiffel Tower, and the Sydney Opera House. The movement hopes to have 1 billion people in darkness.

I mean just that: darkness. As in devoid of of knowledge, reason, and production. The entire environmentalist movement is anti-man, condemning him for his productivity and success in this world. The movement has taken the genius and life enhancing invention of the light bulb, and warped it into a sin. Attempts like Earth Hour aim to halt man's progress and send him back into the dark ages, all for the sake of "saving" the environment.

Keith Lockitch writes in his excellent op-ed "The Real Meaning of Earth Hour":

The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

The University of Michigan Students of Objectivism have developed Edison Hour as a counter measure to Earth Hour. Here's their Facebook event description:

In 2009, at 8.30pm on March 28, we are asking people across the world to turn ON their lights and join together in a celebration of technology and industrialization. For one hour, please use as much power and energy as possible in order to celebrate the advancement of mankind.

I find it to be refreshing, a celebration of man and achievement rather than another human-hating environmental effort.

I'm going to plug in my laptop, my iPod, my mobile, I will turn on my heater, open the window, with curtains pulled back I will have my lights on in full view of the people who will be gathering outside to indicate that I couldn't give a damn about their little goodie-two-shoes selflessness parade that advocates a return to the days when electricity didn't light up the lives of billions.

"Tomorrow hundreds of thousands will take to London’s streets for the “Put People First” march, calling for “the start of a new system that seeks to make the economy work for people and the planet”. The Salvation Army will be there, as will Save the Children and Greenpeace, and the actor Tony Robinson will compere the rally. Anti-capitalism having gone mainstream, this march hopes to be its unobjectionable face, and their demands are moderate enough that most Labour ministers would sign up...

All of which sits uneasily alongside the fiery rhetoric of groups such as G20 Meltdown, which has threatened to hijack Saturday’s event, calling on its supporters to invade any office block with lights on and turn them off to coincide with “Earth Hour”, a worldwide “power down”.

The group, whose public face, the 66-year-old anthropology professor Chris Knight, right, was suspended yesterday from his job at the University of East London after suggesting in a radio interview that bankers could find themselves “hanging from lampposts”, is one of the main forces behind the “Financial Fool’s Day” protests that threaten to cause chaos in the City on April 1, the eve of the G20 summit...

The group insists that its protest outside the Bank of England will involve nothing more violent than dancing, theatre and possibly a little nudity (“for Emperor’s New Clothes metaphorical purposes”). Mark Barrett, their spokesman, introduces himself to The Times, saying: “I’m with the Government of the Dead and New Sovereignty. Our ideas are about nationalising and decentralising — nationalising everything, and decentralising services so everything is local.”...

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